The early border skirmishes of Campaign 2012 are reviving questions about one candidate’s former pastor and shining a spotlight on the other’s high school hijinks. Can a fresh round of questions about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate be far behind?

In a campaign year when voters have declared the economy their top concern, Obama and Mitt Romney are on notice that there’s no statute of limitations on the issues or conduct that might be used against them. And there’s sure to be somebody with money or other means to insert even low-threshold matters into the political dialogue.

“It’s open season,” says Eric Dezenhall, an expert on crisis management. “This is going to be very rough.”

House Speaker John Boehner is criticizing an abandoned super PAC plan to use the Rev. Jeremiah Wright against President Barack Obama.

“Well, look, this kind of nonsense shouldn’t happen,” the Ohio Republican said in an interview taped to air Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “The election’s gonna be about the economy and getting Americans back to work. And I think Governor [Mitt] Romney’s prescriptions are much better.”

ABC News’ George Will this morning slammed The New York Times for its story this week outlining a proposed advertising campaign to link Rev. Jeremiah Wright and President Obama…

Radio host Laura Ingraham agreed, and offered that this controversy may hint at things to come this election year.

“This to me was a shot across the bow that if you are a wealthy … If you are a wealthy, wealthy person in the United States, you happen to be conservative, you’re going to get involved in this election, then we are going to watch everything that you do, and you sort of step over the line, you talk about past associations with President Obama, anything like that, we will try to destroy you,” Ingraham said. “The idea that he (Ricketts) was considering it was a total false narrative put forward by The New York Times to send a message to other people, don’t you dare get involved in this election, in any type of, quote, ‘controversial’ way.”

In the interview, Wright told Ed Klein, author of The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, that he keeps a cardboard box of documents and notes detailing his experiences beginning in March 2008, when the controversy over his sermons began. “It’s a painful box to look at,” Wright said.

“Marty had me over to his home for dinner in January [2010],” Wright told Klein. “He said to me, ‘Are you keeping notes on what’s happened to you in this Obama campaign?’ I said, ‘Yes, sir, I am.’ He said, ‘Don’t publish it until after the next election. They’ll think it’s sour grapes. Wait until after 2012.'”

It was at that point, Wright told Klein, that he decided to leave the box untouched, at least for now. “I don’t look at the box,” Wright said. “I haven’t looked at it since I’ve been to Marty’s house.”

“[Marty] said, ‘Don’t write that until after 2012,” Wright said. “I said, ‘I’m not.’ [He said] ‘Don’t publish it.’ [I said] ‘I’m not.’ I haven’t even looked at it. I’ve just put all of it in one box and said I would get to it later.”

“I will fight hard for Obama to win. But just as his 08 campaign did, I believe we must elevate & not denigrate. This is the Obama I know”

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“It behooves us to talk about what [Romney] did” as CEO of Bain Capital, Axelrod said. To that end, the campaign has released ads attacking Romney’s business record at the venture capital firm as “vampire” capitalism.

“We believe strongly, [as] most Americans do, we honor success, we celebrate success, but we want everybody to have a fair shot at it,” Axelrod said. “If you ask me, ‘Was Romney good at making money for himself and his partners?’ Yes. [But] if you ask me, ‘Was that a good vision for building America’s economy?’ …The answer is no.”

Karl Rove insisted on Sunday that attacking presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney over his work at Bain Capital will not help President Barack Obama as much as his re-election campaign expects…

“We saw that in how the Obama campaign went after him: they put a grand total of $83,000 behind their attack ad, and everybody in the media lapped it up. But let’s look at the facts: Romney invested $180 million in the company, the company made money for a while and eight years later after a flood of cheap-end steel came into the United States – principally from China – it and a number of other steel companies went under – over two years after he left Bain Capital.”

“Over time, I think, this is going to be okay for Romney, as long as he engages in it,” Rove added.

Via Mediaite.